Posts

But Is He A Kike?

By Elisa / December 17, 2007

Comments (12)

Jamie Kastner's documentary, "Kike Like Me", airs tonight on the Sundance channel at 10pm. Should be very in-ter-es-ting.

According to an interview in today's New York Times, Kastner says the film "stemmed from being continually asked if he was Jewish because of his looks or his name."

And the film refuses to answer that central question. "Kastner teases the audience with hints about his identity: his circumcision, his attendance at Catholic boarding school, a photograph of his blond mother and one of his dark-haired bride on their wedding day." (Wait: I'm confused. Can Jewish people attend Catholic boarding school and be blond? Can non-Jews be circumcised and swarthy?? Help!)

Is he or isn't he?

"'Do you want to blame me for Israel? Do you want to set me up with your daughter? So why do you want to know? What is it in yourself, audience, that you are prejudicing?'"

Well, if I wasn't black, I couldn't say "Nigger". (Luckily my stepfather's Sephardic!) And if Kastner isn't a Jew he sure as shit can't say "Kike".

So I'm eager to see the film and find out whether I think this man's a genius or a total a-hole.

Comments (12)

POST A COMMENT

By jennynews 7/30/10 at 12:12 p.m. UTC
…And, Jamie himself, following in his mother’s footsteps, has had what is known as a "nose job."

No doubt their responses will be that they both walked into doors, or some such thing. I think the mother’s excuse at the time was that she "drove into a snowbank" (plentiful in Canada).
By jennynews 7/30/10 at 12:08 p.m. UTC
Both Jamie Kastner’s parents were Jews. His father’s name was Ellman actually. His mother’s name is Kastner, and both her parents were Jews (so, in spite of extensive plastic surgery, she, too, is a Jew).

I found his film, "Kike Like Me," dull and shallow. The family was once well known in Toronto, Canada, for its self-promoting activities and shallow and sensational docs. Jamie, it seems, carries on the family tradition.
By Barbara Reader 12/27/07 at 5:51 p.m. UTC
Let's see…

by Reform Standards, his ancestry passes, but without a Jewish education, he is not Jewish.

by Conservative or Othodoxy standards, he is not Jewish, as he has neither a Jewish mother nor a kosher conversion.

by
Hitler's standards, which, I have to assume, is the standard which
interests him, since his criteria is anti-semetism, not Judaism, he is
Jewish.

So, in conclusion, he was created by and for the
promulation of anti-semetism… and he is doing what he was created to
do… with the help of his friends in the BBC.
By MickPaddy O'Brien 12/21/07 at 11:44 p.m. UTC
I read lots of comments pages ranging from snarky to hypersnarky (gawker media, tmz, etc.) I tripped onto this website (damn you slate) and felt compelled to say this…jesus, I thought the evangelicals were fucked up. this site answers the "are jews genetically smarter?" question very nicely.
By Elisa 12/19/07 at 12:41 p.m. UTC
couldn't actually sit through the whole thing, though, so maybe he got smarter, funnier, and a better grasp of his subject's deep complexities in the second half. he's cute, though! i can see how he'd get a lot of fix-up offers. behold! the end of the jewish people will be televised.
By Eli Valley 12/19/07 at 12:06 a.m. UTC
Kastner doesn't talk about Judaism. With very few exceptions, he talks about anti-Semitism, dead Jews, and the memory of Jews in places where they are absent.

I wish he had spent a little more of his vacation video exploring Judaism through a prism other than anti-Semitism and genocide, but by defining Judaism by these criteria, he showed that he's actually much more "typically Jewish" than he might care to admit.
By Anonymous 12/18/07 at 8:23 p.m. UTC
Another screwed up child of intermarriage disrespecting Judaism. Kaster should've have done a film titled "Goy like Me" which would've have suited him better.
By Anonymous 12/18/07 at 12:46 p.m. UTC
i thought he seemed like a total douche. in a way that made me think "hey, you know what? my kids are fully attending hardcore jewish day school, just so they won't be ignorant douches like this guy. and if they want to *reject* what they learn, cool. but how can you reject or embrace if you have NO INFORMATION?" basically. and his nasal drone made the terrible voice-over observations even more grating.

meanwhile, over on HBO, munich was showing. and ten minutes of tony kushner's dialogue told a deeper, more interesting story about what it means to be "jewish" than kastner's whole shtick.

laaaaaaame.
By Izzy Grinspan 12/18/07 at 11:04 a.m. UTC
Well, the second half was — I missed the first half. But from what I saw, Kastner talks about Jewish identity in a way that should actually resonate with young ambivalent Jews. He's not nostalgic, and he's not preachy, just genuinely curious about what it means to be Jewish. OK, to put it better: you know how when someone uses the phrase "what it means to be Jewish" your eyes glaze over, even if you're, like, a Jewish studies PhD candidate, because at this point in history nobody seems to agree on what it DOES mean and yet all sorts of groups invoke it all the time to serve their own purposes? Kastner somehow makes that question fresh again.
By Baltimom 12/18/07 at 12:29 a.m. UTC
No, I will not be watching. Obviously, the man is entitled to say any stupid thing he likes. It could be artistically interesting, but, is it good for the Jews? Yes, I know it's the same old question. But let's look at the African American experience. Obviously, you can't blame gangster rap for everything. That said, allowing the N-word and exaggerated stereotypes of black male violence and sexuality to permeate their popular culture has undoubtedly made racism worse, not better. It's a lot easier to demonize Tupac Shakur than Grandma Moses. Once you start letting kike enter common parlance, or making movies like "Keeping up with the Steins," well, the genie's out of the bottle. It doesn't matter that Baron Cohen is lampooning anti-semitism. He's still allowing people to feel comfortable expressing it out in the open, when they might have felt ashamed enough to keep their mouths shut otherwise.

BTW, I'm thinking one of his parents is Jewish. Maybe he only gets to say Ki.
By Anonymous 12/17/07 at 6:05 p.m. UTC
Their hatred of Israel is well known.

Kastner's "Do you want to blame me for Israel?" is another antisemitic quip.

I am a proud Kike and you can blame Israel on me. If Israel didn't exist I'd be working to create it all over again in the homeland of the Jews.
By Anonymous 12/17/07 at 6:02 p.m. UTC
their comedy is equally distasteful.

Using the word "kike" as he does is insulting. This is another sign of the growing antisemitism which is abetted by some hip "new" Jews.